USAToday
Claudia Puig
Though you can see his character's redemption coming a mile away, Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino is still well worth the ride.
Eastwood plays a cantankerous and bigoted Korean War veteran and retired auto worker. He is equally nasty to the parish priest as he is to the immigrant family next door. He doesn't want to be bothered with any kind of niceties - not even to his longtime barber, who seems like the closest thing he has to a friend.
He doesn't have much use for his children or grandchildren. Nor do they seem to feel much affection for him.
The misanthropic and thoroughly un-PC Walt Kowalski is a facet of Dirty Harry, with a permanently etched scowl.
He does hold a few things dear: his faithful Labrador retriever, Daisy, the memory of his beloved wife and his pristine 1972 Gran Torino, a reminder of better times But he's haunted by memories of a Korean soldier he killed in combat. And he can't - or won't - get his head around the neighborhood's encroaching diversity. Chief among the newcomers are the Hmong immigrants who have moved in next door.
Gran Torino is dark, sometimes comically so. Walt is off-putting, and his guttural growl defines his persona. But, as did Eastwood's character in Million Dollar Baby, Walt becomes an unlikely mentor to a young person at a crossroads. He slowly thaws and assumes an almost fatherly role to Thao (Bee Vang), the shy boy living next door who is terrorized by Hmong gangbangers. He also forges an avuncular bond with Thao's older sister, Sue (Ahney Her), and finds meaning and goodness in a life that had come to seem purposeless.
Told in a pared-down style, this is a humanistic tale, despite the racial epithets and violence. In some ways Eastwood is sending up his Dirty Harry image, and in other ways he's magnifying it, showing us the harsh realities in store for a man who takes the law into his own hands.
Earnest and understated, Gran Torino is an unflinching examination of themes that have fascinated Eastwood in most of his recent films: family, war, loss, faith and unexpected human connection.
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